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Classical Diplomacy and Bourbon “Revanche” Strategy, 1763–1770

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Ramon E. Abarca
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Extract

Francois-Etienne, due de Choiseul-Stainville, chief foreign policy-maker of France between 1758 and1770, sought to reverse the Peace of Paris which marked France's humiliating defeat by England in the Seven Years War. The objective of his “Revanche” was the restoration of the prewar maritime, commercial and colonial equilibrium with the British. To accomplish it, he relied on the Family Pact of 1761 with Spain, then the world's third naval power, and on the defensive Franco-Austrian alliance concluded in 1756 and revised in 1759, which Choiseul believed would suffice to keep the European continent at peace while the Bourbon powers concentrated all their forces, military and financial, for a purely naval war with Great Britain.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 32 , Issue 3 , July 1970 , pp. 313 - 337
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1970

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References

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